Our Work

Our purpose is to make a significant, positive difference for future generations by helping to solve what we consider to be some of America’s most important challenges. We pursue this work primarily through three initiatives – The Rodel Foundation of Delaware, the Rodel Foundation of Arizona, and the Rodel Fellowships in Public Leadership. The Delaware and Arizona initiatives focus on public education in their respective states, and the Rodel Fellowship program operates in partnership with the Aspen institute in an effort to improve public leadership in the U.S. Please use the dropdown menu to visit our iniatives’ sites.

History

The Rodel Foundations were formed in 1999 by Bill, Don and Susan Budinger, when Rodel Inc. was sold to a multibillion-dollar chemical company. Rodel Inc. had been founded by Bill Budinger in Delaware and Don Budinger in Arizona about 30 years earlier. Susan Budinger subsequently joined the company in the early 1990’s. Rodel’s first products were specialty textiles and chemicals used for a variety of surface preparation applications. Ultimately, variants of those products were developed for use in critical stages of semiconductor manufacturing, which fueled much of the Company’s tremendous growth. The Company had become global in the early 1980’s, through a joint venture in Japan, called Rodel Nitta, as well as the establishment of operations in Europe and elsewhere in Asia.